Wednesday, 14 August 2013

China Has More Than 500,000 "Leftover Women"

Xu Jiajie has gone on countless blind dates and to numerous match-making events over the past five years in search of a husband.
At 31, the baby-faced office worker from Shanghai is under enormous
pressure from family and friends to get married. But the right man is
hard to find, she says, a big issue for urban, educated and well-paid
Chinese women in a society where the husband's social status is
traditionally above the wife's.
"My parents have introduced every bachelor they know," said Xu, who
earns double the average wage in Shanghai. "Half of the bachelors I met
are quiet and never go out. Outgoing men don't need blind dates."As
couples celebrate the "Qixi" festival on Tuesday, the Chinese equivalent
of Valentine's Day, Xu and millions of women like her face stark
choices as long-held ideas about matrimonial hierarchy run up against
economic and social changes sweeping the world's most populous country.
The term "shengnu" - directly translated as "leftover women" - was
coined to refer to professional women who have not married by their late
20s.
"Chinese people often think males should be higher in a relationship
in every sense, including height, age, education and salary," Ni Lin,
who hosts a popular match-making television show in Shanghai, told
Reuters.
"This leads to a phenomenon in which A-grade men marry B-grade women,
B-grade men marry C-grade women and C-grade men marry D-grade women.
Only A-grade women and D-grade men can't find partners."
In Beijing, more than a third of women in their late 20s and 30s are
looking for husbands, according to the dating website Jiayuan.com. Media
reports say there may be as many as 500,000 "leftover women" in the
capital.
There are plenty of men to go round among China's nearly 1.4 billion
people but social status can conspire against single professional woman
once again.
China's population is more tilted towards men than in many countries
due to the government's one-child policy and a cultural preference for
boys. The latest census in 2011 showed there were twice as many single
men born in the 1970s as women of the same age.